The not so fun aspects of freelancing

There
seems to be an overall general consensus that freelancing is the ideal
situation. It seems like everyone wants to have their own business or “be
their own boss.” I feel a growing collective desire to work for ourselves
and not be employed by someone else. To many, this lifestyle allows them the
freedom to do many things and overall have more time to themselves.

The few things that people do not talk about freelancing that can really make freelancing not ideal are the following:

It is stressful not having security.

It’s interesting that you give up the security of knowing where your next check is coming from and give it up so that you can work for yourself and bust your butt trying to figure out how you’re going to get your next check. It’s very stressful trying to figure out how you’re going to make your money and in what ways that is going to come to you.

Working WAY TOO MUCH!!

When you are a freelancer, sometimes it is difficult to stop working. It seems like when you are freelancing the clock never stops working. You are at work all the time and sometimes it is difficult to set healthy boundaries for yourself in order to still fulfill your personal obligation and get things done.

When you work for yourself, the load never seems to free up.

A lot of us try to do all of the work ourselves and never outsource for any kind of assistance in order to save money not realizing that time IS money.

MORE RESPONSIBILITY

It took me a while to come to the realization that the reason I always avoided being a full-time freelancer was that it would mean that there was more responsibility for me. If I worked for myself I was responsible for the work that came with the success and also responsible for all of my failures. For instance, doing photography does mean looking for clients until the clientele starts coming in on its own. Running this website www.keepmeforeva.com doesn’t mean that I get sales all day. I still have to market, and so much more. So with being a business owner, there come a plethora of other responsibilities that we have to take on in order to maintain and sometimes even break even. Between the work in doing the website, or finding someone else to, marketing, taking pictures, posting products, making descriptions and so much more. It gets overwhelming pretty quickly.

Don’t get me wrong. It is nice to not have to wake up at a certain time to be somewhere. But some days, I do think to myself that I’d rather do that than to have to spend 15 hours a day working on and plotting ways to make sure that I still have money coming in. Being a business owner is not necessarily ideal for everyone. In my case, the things that you see displayed are things that I LOVE making. I make a lot of things for myself and I decided to share them with the world and create a space of love and healing on the internet. My long-term business goals consist of being a Therapist where I will continue to use my gifts to heal. One way or another, I will be a business owner. Until then, I will probably go back and forth between being a small business owner and working part-time for one to ease the monthly stress of income worries.

Mental health and self-care are very important. It’s important to acknowledge the ways that something like working for yourself can do to negatively affect your self-care management if you’re not careful!

What are your entrepreneurial stories, challenges, and accomplishments! We want to hear about it!